Does the forum seem faster?

[vangogh]

Hey All,

I was hoping you wouldn't mind answering a quick question.

A few minutes ago I was on the phone with our hosting company asking them a question unrelated to this place, but during the call the tech support person noticed something that wasn't quite right in the server settings. I blame myself for the bad settings. I think it might have happened when I was setting up this and some other domains on the server originally.

Anyway after our conversation I started noticing that pages seemed to be loading a lot faster here as well as my other domains that are also on the server. Thought I'd ask if anyone else is noticing the same here.

So does the forum seem faster than it used to? Are you noticing any difference?

[Steve B]

Yes - it seems faster. Although I think it used to be this fast before - then slowed down a few weeks ago for some reason.

[Spider]

Right now it seems fast. Did this change take place this evening? Up until my last use - mid-afternoon today - I was thinking about commenting how slow it seemed to be.

[billbenson]

It still seems slow to me. No change?

[vangogh]

If there was any changed it would have happened around 4:30 Mountain time today. Nothing was changed specifically to make the forum faster, but it seemed like all my sites got faster after one change on the sever. Figured I would ask.

Now I'm wondering why it had been getting slower for people. It shouldn't have been, but then again it shouldn't have gotten faster today either.

[Bruce Chang]

I am a new member to this forum so I don't know the load speed before, but now it runs very fast to me in China. Compared to other forums I am using, the load speed really impressed me.

[jamesray50]

No, I think it is slower than normal, but then it might be my computer. I haven't figured it out yet.

[Spider]

I find the load speed fluctuates. Not annoyingly, but enough to notice. And I mean hour-to-hour fluctuation. I guess it's internet load, or how many people in my subdivision are online at any given moment.

[MyITGuy]

Just FYI, there is definitely a huge performance issue with your server (Saw the performance mentioned during the Forum Upgrade thread, but posted here to keep on topic).

Here is a test I just ran using Load Impact - Free web site load test (http://www.loadimpact.com:)
Load Impact - Load test results for small-business-forum.net (http://loadimpact.com/result/small-business-forum.net-6edfd2f8acd4645e6bc60dfcd2f51906)

As you can see, a load of 10 clients browsing the site has response times of approx. 15 seconds and jumps to 50 seconds with a load of 30 users. Ideally, the response time should be level with minor fluctuations, and should definitely be under 10 seconds (Preferably under 3 seconds as response times supposedly impact SEO results.), but this depends on the size of the content being served. Below is the same test ran against one of my domains and reflects what you should be seeing:
Load Impact - Load test results for cingularhosting.net (http://loadimpact.com/result/cingularhosting.net-356f3953a1149e5008914113f0a4c2db)

If you want to share the specifications of your existing plan, or your requirements I would be interested in reviewing them and possibly sponsoring the site (Shared Hosting or VPS) or offering a discount dedicated server. (You can view my plans on Cingular Hosting - Portal Home (http://www.cingularhosting.net) if you prefer to review them yourself). Or if you would like help in troubleshooting the issue just let me know.

[vangogh]

Thanks for the info. I'll mention this to my host and see what they say. Appreciate it.

[vangogh]

I wanted to revive this thread again. My hosting company moved us to a new server today as part of an upgrade on their part. I'm curious what your experience is. Does the forum seem any faster now? Less hangs?

It's seemed a little better to me all day, but I know it can be hit or miss. I have some options for moving things to another server set up with the same company, but before I do I thought I'd see how today's change is affecting everyone.

Thanks.

[billbenson]

Ummmm No. Exactly the same to me. Had some really slow page loads.

[vangogh]

Right after I posted the above it got slow for me too. For the most part though it has been feeling quicker to me since yesterday. I do get the occasional slow page load, but they seem to be occurring less. I think many of those are a result of an addon I have installed to fight spam. When people attempt to register some of their information is checked against a couple of databases on known spam accounts. Every so often I've turned it off for a few minutes and the forum instantly gets faster. Unfortunately the number of spam accounts that were able to register during those few minutes was quite a few and the addon was back on.

If I could find another spam fighting addon or figure out a way to make this one faster I would. No luck so far though.

[KristineS]

It doesn't really seem a lot faster, but I've not been getting the page hang ups that seemed to be fairly common recently, so it could be a net gain.

[MyITGuy]

I wanted to revive this thread again. My hosting company moved us to a new server today as part of an upgrade on their part. I'm curious what your experience is. Does the forum seem any faster now? Less hangs?

It's seemed a little better to me all day, but I know it can be hit or miss. I have some options for moving things to another server set up with the same company, but before I do I thought I'd see how today's change is affecting everyone.

Thanks.

Nope, seems to be about the same:
Load Impact - On Demand Website Load Testing and Performance Testing Service (http://loadimpact.com/load-test/www.small-business-forum.net-c76fc17838fdf693662687cd261e49e8)

While running the test above your site pretty much became unusable for me which isn't good.

[KristineS]

Right after I wrote the previous thread, I started getting a lot of hang ups again, particularly when posting replies.

[MyITGuy]

Right after I posted the above it got slow for me too. For the most part though it has been feeling quicker to me since yesterday. I do get the occasional slow page load, but they seem to be occurring less. I think many of those are a result of an addon I have installed to fight spam. When people attempt to register some of their information is checked against a couple of databases on known spam accounts. Every so often I've turned it off for a few minutes and the forum instantly gets faster. Unfortunately the number of spam accounts that were able to register during those few minutes was quite a few and the addon was back on.

If I could find another spam fighting addon or figure out a way to make this one faster I would. No luck so far though.

What module(s) are you using? I would think that it would only be evaluating/running when a new account is being created, or if a new user below X posts is making a post. It shouldn't be bringing your forum to a crawl when just viewing content?

On a PHPBB forum I used to admin, a simple module caught most, if not all of the spam. It was a timezone check, with -100UTC - Pluto being added as the first entry in the list. Since the spam bots wouldn't know how to handle this, it would end up as the default entry, at which point if this was still the selected option their registration would be denied/rejected. This was then followed up by a blacklist check that only ran during registration or if users had less then 10 posts.

[MyITGuy]

For comparison, I did a quick search for other vBulletin users and performed the following test for comparison purposes. I can't speak to the hardware they're using...but this would be representative of what you should be seeing on your server. A nice, flat load time across the board, or at least a slight curve towards the end of the test when it has 50 concurrent users.

Load Impact - On Demand Website Load Testing and Performance Testing Service (http://loadimpact.com/load-test/forum.doom9.org-3092b924481f36d352a2f6ee120ceace)

[vangogh]

Thanks for the tests.

It's just one addon, but it runs some of the registration info against a couple of databases on other sites, so we have to rely on those sites running well. It does only evaluate when a new account is being created, but with automated spam that could mean dozens at the same time that are all then sending and waiting on information from other sites. I'm pretty sure that's what causes all the hangups.

I've looked to see if anyone else has had similar problems, but haven't found anything. I'll keep looking.

What I've noticed since yesterday is if you're here at a time when we aren't getting the hangups things seem to be loading faster. A few times I hit the button to reply and my post was there almost instantly. I'm curious if anyone else notices that. I'm trying to identify if the issues are more server related or addon related. I suspect it's the addon more than anything else and if that's the case I can put more effort into looking for a different one or experimenting with the settings to see if it helps.

[MyITGuy]

Thanks for the tests.

It's just one addon, but it runs some of the registration info against a couple of databases on other sites, so we have to rely on those sites running well. It does only evaluate when a new account is being created, but with automated spam that could mean dozens at the same time that are all then sending and waiting on information from other sites. I'm pretty sure that's what causes all the hangups.

I've looked to see if anyone else has had similar problems, but haven't found anything. I'll keep looking.

What I've noticed since yesterday is if you're here at a time when we aren't getting the hangups things seem to be loading faster. A few times I hit the button to reply and my post was there almost instantly. I'm curious if anyone else notices that. I'm trying to identify if the issues are more server related or addon related. I suspect it's the addon more than anything else and if that's the case I can put more effort into looking for a different one or experimenting with the settings to see if it helps.

One module should not be able to affect a whole server like it is, to me it sounds like a server issue considering the exponential increase in load time based on the number of active users on the site (The load tests referenced previously).

To determine if this is actually the case, feel free to disable the module in question and run the load impact test yourself...it is free.

Mind sharing if this is a shared server, VPS or dedicated server? (If it's a VPS or dedicatated server, mind sharing the OS your running? Also, if its a VPS can you share the technology that it's using? I.E. Virtuazzo, OpenVZ, XEN, VMWare or etc..) I seem to recall you stating it's a VPS but I'm not positive. Based on your feedback I'll see if I can send you a few commands to run to help determine the cause.

[vangogh]

I'll send you a PM with some info.

What I always find strange about the hangups is they don't happen all the time and the times aren't consistent. I have turned off the spam module in the past and everything ran fast when I did, but it also let in plenty of spam in the few minutes it was off.

[Alisha]

Hey All,

I was hoping you wouldn't mind answering a quick question.

A few minutes ago I was on the phone with our hosting company asking them a question unrelated to this place, but during the call the tech support person noticed something that wasn't quite right in the server settings. I blame myself for the bad settings. I think it might have happened when I was setting up this and some other domains on the server originally.

Anyway after our conversation I started noticing that pages seemed to be loading a lot faster here as well as my other domains that are also on the server. Thought I'd ask if anyone else is noticing the same here.

So does the forum seem faster than it used to? Are you noticing any difference?

@vangogh your forum is faster than other, I got this difference when browsing other forum.
Great Work!

[vangogh]

Thanks Alisha. We seem to have intermittent problems with the forum slowing down. I may need to upgrade the server we're on. Sometimes the site is very fast and other times it slows down a lot.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Thanks Alisha. We seem to have intermittent problems with the forum slowing down. I may need to upgrade the server we're on. Sometimes the site is very fast and other times it slows down a lot.

There's been some nights where it's been inaccessible, though I don't know if that's when you're fixing stuff.

Feel free to hit me up if you ever need to pick my brain.

[Freelancier]

Sometimes the site is very fast and other times it slows down a lot.

My site which gets maybe 100 visitors a day often slows down when I get 3-4 of those pesky robots trying to grab 5-10 pages per second. You'll want to look at your access logs to see if that's what is going on and then figure out how to block some of the robots you don't care about.

[vangogh]

There's been some nights where it's been inaccessible

Brian it's not me fixing it. I wish that was the cause. The issue seems to be with my other site, which is on the same server. It's a WordPress site and since April WordPress sites have been getting hit with brute force attacks against the login. Comment spam seems to be up significantly in the last few weeks. When enough of either hits the site it's making too many connections freezing the server. I've been working with my hosting company and have been trying different things. I made some changes to my caching plugin earlier tonight and so far things have been better. I'll leave things for a few days and if the intermittent down times come back, I'm probably going to buy more server.


You'll want to look at your access logs to see if that's what is going on and then figure out how to block some of the robots you don't care about.

I've been through the logs. It's a lot of traffic. For example in the last few hours my spam plugin caught about 500 spam comments. I must be getting a few thousand a day right now. And that's only the ones getting far enough to submit something. I have some things set up to blog most before they even try to submit.

With the attacks on the login, there's a bot network of about 100,000 computers that's being used to find and attack any WordPress site it can find. It's been going on for a few months now.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Brian it's not me fixing it. I wish that was the cause. The issue seems to be with my other site, which is on the same server. It's a WordPress site and since April WordPress sites have been getting hit with brute force attacks against the login. Comment spam seems to be up significantly in the last few weeks. When enough of either hits the site it's making too many connections freezing the server. I've been working with my hosting company and have been trying different things. I made some changes to my caching plugin earlier tonight and so far things have been better. I'll leave things for a few days and if the intermittent down times come back, I'm probably going to buy more server.

Are you on your own box where you could run something like fail2ban? Can your host not stop it at the edge routers?

[vangogh]

I have a VPS, though it's the least VPS I could buy. Until recently, it's been fine and I didn't think I needed more server, but it might just be time to upgrade. What seems to be happening is when the load gets high it maxes out the connections and the server freezes until the load decreases. When I'm on one of the sites and notice I can restart the server and sometimes I'll restart the database too. Usually one or both drops the load and everything works fine again. Sometimes it doesn't

So far the changes I made yesterday to my caching plugin seem to be helping. For the last few weeks I've been waking up to emails from the server letting me know when it shut down and restarted. No emails this morning. It's possible the load didn't quite get to the point it sometimes does so I'll wait a few days before declaring the changes a success. Regardless I think traffic is reaching the point where more server is necessary. Before launching the forum I was running my other site on shared hosting. When I stepped up to a VPS, I bought the least VPS I could get in the interest of saving some money. That's 5 years ago I think and it's probably past the time to upgrade the server.